We were all watching the bobolinks in the field when Duncan cleared his throat.
“What IS your research with the bird song, and why are your lost recordings so important?” he said.
I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “I needed them as baseline data for song dialects for my new experiments that will also deal with the anatomy of singing.”
“Dialects?” asked Duncan.
“Yeah. Some birds sing in dialects. An Indigo Bunting in Kingston will sing a different version of the song than one in western Ontario.”
“Like English and cockney English?”
“Exactly. The young birds hear the male singing and pattern their song after him. His song will vary from the birds some distance away and dialects form. I’ve already got songs from eastern Ontario. Point Pelee was the other location. I’m going to compare the differences and catalogue the notes and then move on to the anatomy.”
“And how the devil do you do that — the identifying the bird by ear part?” asked Duncan. “You must have one hell of a good ear.”
Martha sniggered and I said, “Well, actually, I’m pretty close to being tone deaf.”
“Then my question stands.”
“It’s pretty simple. I suss them out by sight if I can, and go on a wing and a prayer if I can’t. Then I just record the bird’s song and convert it electronically into a sonogram, which is essentially the musical score of the bird’s song.”
“Like sheet music?” asked Duncan.
“Like sheet music but prettier to look at. You get blips and blobs and short fat notes and small, skinny ones and intricate lacework. Not all the same round dots that our music has. It’s actually pretty cool. The chickadee, for instance, says chick-a-dee-dee-dee, which sounds simple but its sonogram is surprisingly complex.”
“So why can’t you choose an entirely different location for your second population of birds? It doesn’t have to be Point Pelee does it?” said Duncan.
I cocked my head and looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Another location where buntings are present.”
“Did you have something in mind?”
“Spaniel Island.”
“Which is where?”
“It’s a small barrier island off the coast of South Carolina. There’s a biology research station there,” Duncan said as he mopped up the rest of his salad dressing with the bread.
“What’s a barrier island?” Martha asked.
“It acts as a barrier between the sea and the mainland, catching the brunt of the wind and the waves.”
“How do you know about this place?” I asked.
“I have a cottage on the island. I just came back from there a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure I could get you accommodation at the research station. Failing that, there is room in my cottage for you, but it would be more interesting at the research station. I know they have a vacant cabin because a researcher had to back out just this week. Shall I call them?”
Duncan was full of surprises. A cottage? On a barrier island? I looked at Martha, who shrugged and said, “Sounds like a good idea. It’s a new location. You won’t get frustrated over having to do it all again in the same place.”
“But I don’t have any equipment. It was all in the car. The tape recorder, the parabola, everything.” Besides, I thought, why would I want to go to a barrier island in the heat of summer, even if buntings were there?
“I can check and see if the research station has any of that equipment. I know they have quite a bit of stuff.” Duncan grabbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and pinched it. He was actually a good-looking older guy, if you could ignore his nose, which I couldn’t, although his fine head of silver-grey hair and grey-blue eyes, which constantly smiled, almost competed.
“It won’t cost you much either, Cordi. The station is subsidized,” he said.
Looking back, all I know for sure is that I’m glad I didn’t know the real price I would have to pay, or I never would have gone.
chapter two
Fortunately it was summer. Classes were out and I had some open time to redo my experiments, once I’d rescheduled some meetings. I rationalized that I would have had to take the time to go back to Pelee if Duncan hadn’t come through with Spaniel Island, so it wasn’t as if I was taking a vacation. It would be legitimate research. And Duncan, miraculously, had secured the recording equipment I would need to tape my birds. I wasn’t even going to have to lug it with me. It was already down there. It would be fun to be at a research station again. There’s something invigorating about the high-intensity atmosphere of such a place, where research is paramount and everyone is tied together to one common goal — to find answers to their questions. The questions, of course, are all different but the route to the answer lies in the heart and in the drive to do it, and researchers the world over have that in spades. If they don’t they won’t last.
The flight to Savannah was uneventful, although I was a little surprised when Martha showed up at the airport with a bag almost as big as she was and announced herself by calling out across fifty yards of airport that she was here and had managed to get a seat beside me. Don’t get me wrong. Martha and I are good friends. It’s just that I hadn’t known that she was coming with me. She had neglected to mention that when she booked the tickets.
“Duncan invited me down. Although I told him I wanted to stay at the research station with you, rather than with him. Hard decision, but you’re going to need me as a research assistant to help with all those little buntings,” she said, daring me to contradict her.
The fact that I hadn’t needed her at Point Pelee didn’t seem to have crossed her mind. She told me once that she hated the wilderness and this island was going to be pretty wild, if I knew Duncan. What people do for their lovers, I thought and then winced. My erstwhile lover, Patrick, had flown across the pond to take a job in London, England. I hadn’t been willing to give up my career to follow him and he hadn’t been willing to give up his. We had seen each other just once in the last eight months. I had new respect for Martha, to overcome her dislike of the wilderness because she loved Duncan that much.
We had to change planes in Atlanta. Our connecting plane was a tiny twenty-seat affair, and as it sat on the tarmac I looked out the window and watched a couple of men manhandle Martha’s suitcase into the hold. We were only in the air for forty minutes and landed at a tiny airport on the coast. From there we had to take a taxi, which proved problematic as we tried to stuff Martha’s suitcase in the trunk. In the end it had to go in the backseat. The taxi driver talked nonstop all the way to the wharf, where a boat was waiting to take us to the island. The wharf had seen better days and parts of it were plastered with seagull poop. The birds themselves had taken up perches on the tops of masts and bridges, watching guard over their domain, ever ready should a child drop a French fry or a fisherman unload some fish guts overboard. The marina was located up a tidal creek from the sea, so there were no breathtaking vistas or pounding